The State of our Education

By Abid Omar TS4

It’s wonderful to be a final year science student. The semester had been going very smoothly with a nearly non-existent course load. Due to someone’s goof up, we ended up with only 3 courses (rather than the prescribed four) at the start of the semester, resulting in a very happy and relaxed beginning to our final academic year. But then, when some students realized that they would have insufficient credit hours to graduate with this course load, TIP’s administrative machinery swung into action in their usual glacial pace, and a month later a compulsory course called “Industry and Environment 409” was pulled out of thin air and thrust upon the students.

And with no formal announcement, some students learnt about this new compulsory course after the first class was already over. Anyway, it’s a very pressing concern, this environmental business; to quote from our prospectus, “a major focus of public concern.” And thus a teacher was assigned to teach this course of ‘major concern.’ We’ve had three classes so far, and all I’ve learnt is that to do well in this course, I must throw all my concerns about the environment out the proverbial window and focus on rote-learning the prescribed reading material (which I should be able to pick up from the reprographer a good 24 hours before the first hourly, which happens to be in the next class).

So what my issue with this course? Well, I’m sure our teacher can’t offer anything more substantial than what is contained in the textbook – no personal experiences, no real world examples. And if you happen across one of the textbooks (which would be difficult because there is only one copy of it in the library), you would wonder how it was ever approved for publication.

What about assigning an equally important teacher to this important subject? Someone knowledgeable?